Wheels her pale course; they on their mirth and dance
Intent, with jocund music charm his ear,
At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds.”
Though, as we have seen, weak children were unscrupulously sacrificed at Sparta, they still made offerings to the gods in favour of the strong. The ceremony took place annually during certain festivals, denominated Tithenidia,[[451]] when, in a moment of hospitality, they not only made merry themselves, but overlooked their xenelasia, and entertained generously all such strangers as happened to be present. The banquet given on this occasion was called Kopis, and, in preparation for it, tents were pitched on the banks of the Tiasa near the temple of Artemis Corythalis. Within these, beds formed of heaps of herbs were piled up and covered with carpets. On the day of the festival the nurses proceeded thither with the male children in their arms, and, presenting them to the goddess, offered up as victims a number of sucking pigs. In the feast which ensued loaves baked in an oven, in lieu of the extemporary cake, were served up to the guests. Choruses of Corythalistriæ or dancing girls, likewise performed in honour of the goddess; and in some places persons, called Kyrittoi, in wooden masks, made sport for the guests.[[452]] Probably it may have been on occasions such as this that the nurses, like her in Romeo and Juliet, gave free vent to their libertine tongues, and indulged in those appellations which the tolerant literature of antiquity has preserved.[[453]]
When children were to be weaned, they spread, as the moderns do, something bitter over the nipple,[[454]] that the young republican might learn early how—
“Full in the fount of joy’s delicious springs
Some bitter o’er the flower its bubbling venom flings.”
[373]. More particularly that of a son.—Casaub. ad Theophr. Char. p. 307.
[374]. Sch. Aristoph. Lysist. 757.